Grief Becomes You
Book Cover Design | Interior Design & Layout | Art Direction
client: Maya Stein
THE PROJECT: Following the death of her father in 2017, Maya began putting together the idea of a project about grief—a collection of poems, essays, images and other narratives of loss—and ended up with a compilation that includes work from 60 contributors.
My role as designer was to stitch together all these pieces into a book that would tell a story about grief from the perspective of these 60 voices. But more importantly, to present the work with the clarity and openness that Maya had originally envisioned for the project. The center piece of the design on this project was to create a flow from words to images and back to words, to create a weave between voices and to approach the work with respect and still keep it honest and real, and as raw as grief ever is.
From the introduction to Grief Becomes You:
I want to tell you about my father, but I can’t tell you about my father without also telling you about life without my father. His death is a bookend now, too, a heavy one, marking the precise location where our interwoven narrative—the landscape of 45 years of shared experiences and memories and stories—stops. And for the past two-and-a-half years, the absence of my father has threaded itself through everything. –Maya Stein
“Liz was the only choice for me as a creative partner in making my book, Grief Becomes You, a reality, not just because of her superb eye and design intelligence, but because she is invested, deeply, in the feel of a project, in its impact, in its possibility. And that kind of investment reveals itself in both small and expansive ways. From her rigorous attention to minutiae and her clear and consistent communication, to her enthusiasm for the final launch, Liz has a sustained focus that feels devotional. Throughout each part of the process, I (and my book) felt nested in her good hands, and I am thrilled with the results. To say I am grateful would be an understatement. To work with Liz is to gift your project the care it deserves.”